Healthcare for the Planet?
Celsias today highlighted companies that collect waste products and use them to create energy or useful goods through methods that are carbon neutral.
As one of the entrepreneurs quoted in the article notes, “Nature doesn’t make any waste.” When we redesign our processes in a thoughtful way, we can move society closer to the standard that nature sets. One company described in the article sees its role in redesigning processes we live by as a form of planetary healthcare.
The company that intrigued me most of those mentioned in the Celsias article Waste-to-Resources: The Ultimate Sustainable Industry? is R-Earth. Located in British Columbia, R-Earth is helping communities on Vancouver Island to keep more of the waste that they produce from entering the landfill. At the same time, it generates fertilizer, and is gearing up to produce liquid fuels and electric power as well. While some efforts to use waste for such purposes can be hazardous due to toxins in the waste stream, R-Earth has found a way to contain this risk. The company uses organic waste as the input to its processes, which largely bypasses this concern.
R-Earth began by working with restaurants and grocery stores on Vancouver Island, which agreed to separate their organic waste and provide it to the company. Later, regional districts on the island instituted curbside collection of organic waste in separate bins, which deliver them to R-Earth, providing it with more material to work with.
Among the products that R-Earth produces are organic fertilizer, compost, and liquid plant food. The company is also gearing up to produce ethanol and synthetic diesel fuel as well as electric power from biogas in the coming months.
As the company, which also operates as International Composting Corporation, notes, roughly 7 to 10% of carbon dioxide emissions in North America can be attributed to landfills. It also claims that 40% of the waste deposited in landfills is organic waste, which accounts for all of the greenhouse gas emissions of landfills. With growing demand for energy sources, increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and interest in reducing the flow of waste to landfills, the model that R-Earth has developed seems to have great potential. R-Earth/International Composting calls itself a “planet healthcare company” for the response it provides to these environmental and social afflictions.
You can also see a video demonstrating some of the company’s operating processes online.
Evan
